Card Sorting

Card Sorting

Card Sorting helps clients understand how to best structure their website information architecture, by allowing target users to define what navigation and information categories are most intuitive to them. Card Sorting is best when used in the early stage of website or portal development to determine how to best organize content for target users.

Methodology

Card Sorting is typically conducted in-person in a lab-based setting, by an eVOC moderator. Users are given individual names or labels on separate cards and are asked to create groups of cards that are similar. Once they have grouped the cards, users are asked to create category names to describe each group.

Users are then asked to describe why they organized the cards the way they did and provide a more in-depth description of what each category offers. Following this exercise, predetermined category names can be provided and users can apply the new category names to their own groups, or rearrange cards to more appropriately fit under the given categories.

Benefits

Understand how to define and order content on your website based on target users' expectations

Observe customers as they think about and categorize your products and services

Idenfity why certain products and services are grouped into different categories

Determine the most intuitive navigation, organization, and information architecture for your site

Questions

Is the current organization of information on the website easy to understand?

How would users re-organize content into more intuitive categories?

How do users define the categories they have created?

Are there new categories that arise that are not currently on the site?

Insights

The benefits of Card Sorting are that clients can directly observe participants’ thought processes in person and understand why users categorize content in certain ways. Moderated sessions allow for flexibility in exercises and questioning and enable in-depth probing on each category.

Card Sorting will help identify the most logical navigation structure and information architecture for a site based on the customers’ thought process, rather than the internal business process. Sometimes these two processes are aligned; however, often there are discrepancies between the two, which call for direct user feedback and interaction.

“Over the last three years, we have worked extensively with eVOC Insights to help us with a broad range of research needs. The consultants at eVOC are very effective at both strategic and tactical levels, and have strong knowledge of our industry and of Web best practices in general. The insights gained have impacted our business strategy and have resulted in clear improvements on key performance measures such as online conversion. We highly recommend the team at eVOC.”— Barrie Seidenberg, President / CEO, Viator.com